Felice Beato
Italian-British photographer (1832–1909)
Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers as well as a pioneer of travel photography. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him opportunities to create images of countries, people, and events unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His works provide images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represent the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers; and his impact in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.
Early life and identity
The Beato family was one of the noble Venetian families who ruled the island of Corfu during the era of the Republic of Venice. In the 20th century, Felice Beato was considered an Italian Corfiot. A death certificate discovered in 2009 states Beato was born in Venice in 1832. However, recent scholarship uncovered an application by Beato for a travel permit in 1858 that included information suggesting he was born in 1833 or 1834 on the island of Corfu.
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This entry incorporates text from “Felice Beato” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.